[emacs-humanities] oref.el: quick reference/citation management in plaintext files

[Karl Fogel]

Hi, folks.  The Emacs Humanities list seems like the right place 
to initially announce this package.  We've been using it 
internally at my company for a while and it's been very helpful.

 https://code.librehq.com/ots/ots-tools/-/blob/main/emacs-tools/oref.el

 "OREF: A system for marking and citing sources in plaintext 
 documents."

Here's a simple example:

Suppose you're writing a report in LaTeX, and you have source 
notes scattered across various plaintext files -- say, interview 
notes kept in Org Mode files.  When you're in one of the Org Mode 
files, you can quickly create a new unique reference marker or 
grab an existing marker.  In the LaTeX, you can quickly insert a 
citation to a recently-created or recently-grabbed reference, or 
you can jump from an existing citation to its corresponding 
origin.

Thus, in "jones-interview.org" you might have this:

 Blah blah blah and then she said that the rockets had reached 
 speeds
 of .3c in testing scenarios on a few occasions.  [ref:1c3a90a9]

And in "rocket-report.ltx", this:

 % ref:1c3a90a9
 Blah blah blah their rockets are capable of reaching .3c, 
 according to
 engineers interviewed on background.

If you're reading the LaTeX, you can quickly jump to the source of 
the assertion.  (There's no rule that the citation has to be in a 
LaTeX comment, by the way; it can be part of the LaTeX text if you 
want.)

Both origin reference ("[ref:1c3a90a9]", with square braces) and 
the citation ("ref:1c3a90a9", without square braces) were inserted 
using the main interactive entry point to oref, `oref-do-ref':

1. If you invoke it inside an origin ref, it copies the ref to the 
kill ring;

2. If you invoke it inside a citation, it jumps you to the 
location of the origin ref;

3. If you invoke it anywhere else, it creates a new unique origin 
ref, inserts it at point, and puts the corresponding citation into 
the kill ring.

Further documentation is in the .el file.  I hope this is 
interesting and useful to others.  Comments, feedback, and patches 
welcome.

Best regards,
-Karl